Fall came while I was visiting A in D.C.
Temps before I left had dropped down into the low 60°s during the day and the low 40°s at night—I'd had to drag out the space heater—and, of course, the sun had dipped south across the celestial equnox, the official autumn kick-off. But the trees were still all green.
But driving across the bridge yesterday, there were blazing patches of color. There was a huge storm while I was in the south. Was that what turned the leaves all scarlet and golden?
I hate autumn.
Yes, it's pretty.
But it means winter is coming.
It was a good visit. A
low-key visit. A is under a
lot of stress, and though the Nor'easter wasn't nearly as bad on the Chesapeake as it was on Long Island Sound, it was still rainy, grey, and foreboding. A disincentive for going out.
Also—and I can't believe I did this—I misread the label on a bag of coffee. It was
decaf! And since I get up earlier than A and P, and thus, made my own coffee, for two days in a row, I went without caffeine! Oddly enough, I did not get a caffeine withdrawal headache, but I
did get Major Drag Ass. Fell asleep in the middle of the day (they're called
naps, Brenda!) and barely had enough energy to drag myself up a small hill when A & I went walking in the rain to the small park where A spies on a pair of snowy owls.
I did a
lot of reading.
Do Admit, a fabulous, 400-page (I kid you not) Mimi Pond graphic novel about the lives of the Mitford Sisters and a reread of Lena Dunham's latest memoir (even more stymyingly whiny the second time round). I also rewatched the 1981 miniseries of
Brideshead Revisited because redemption! the haunted garden of memory! etc, etc, etc.
The novel
Brideshead Revisited contains what to me is one of the most beautiful sentences ever written:
But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.Nowadays, the novel is often dismissed as beautifully written but essentially a Catholic polemic. I think that characterization misses the point.
Recusant Catholicism, the Catholicism of the defiant upper classes, was/is substantiatively different from the sweat-and-daisies Catholicism of, say, the starving Irish working class. There's an enormous snob factor.
Brideshead Revisited is essentially a novel about the demise of the British aristocracy.
We did do a couple of away-from-the-house things before the weather turned and the caffeine deprivation kicked in. We went to Huntley Meadows, a wetlands park, where we saw white egrets, dragon flies, and the little fellow above—he's famous on the Internet—and we went to a chamber music concert that took place at a lutier's near the beleagured Kennedy Center.
Classical music and jazz are probably my two favorite musical genres. I still like the pop music I listened to when I was young, but most contemporary pop music doesn't interest me at all for whatever reason. It was very cool sitting 15 feet away from the musicians, and afterwards, we toured the lutier's workshop:
I think I spent about half of September away from Wallkill.
Back in August when the Carl house-sitting thing fell through, it seemed like
trips were the only way I was going to be able to preserve my mental health since I had to go on living here.
I had tentatively planned a New Mexico trip for October, but of course, that's the irritating thing about Jeanna: She is always saying,
Come visit, come visit, but when you say,
Okay!, she lapses into radio silence.
Do admit: You prefer a long-distance relationship.
That's okay.
Jeanna is who Jeanna is, and I love her even though she annoys the shit out of me.
Anyway, I'll be pretty much housebound in October except for a quick trip to see the Ithaca darlings.
My plan is to chain myself to my desk and make as much $$$ as possible.
(Here's RTT with AOC. He got a special shout-out at her Ithaca barnstorming session—she's testing the waters to see if she can snag Schumer's Senate seat—because RTT is the legislator who led the initiative that did away with Ithaca's Flock cameras.)
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